He was to learn that later, and when he knew it, he tasted
the last and bitterest dregs of all. Nevertheless, he could not
reasonably doubt the Queen's word; he was positively certain that he
should find Beatrix at the French court, and from the first he had not
really hesitated about leaving at once. It seemed to be the only
possible course, though it was diametrically opposed to all the good
resolutions which had of late flitted through his dreams like summer
moths.
On the next day but one, early in the spring morning, Gilbert and his
men rode slowly down the desolate Via Lata, and under Aurelian's arch,
past the gloomy tomb of Augustus on the left, held by the Count of
Tusculum, and out at last upon the rolling Campagna, northward, by the
old Flaminian Way.
CHAPTER X
June was upon Italy, as a gossamer veil and a garland on the brow of a
girl bride. The first sweet hay was drying in Tuscan valleys; the fig
leaves were spreading, and shadowing the watery fruit that begins to
grow upon the crooked twigs before the leaves themselves, and which the
people call "fig-blossoms," because the real figs come later; the fresh
and silvery olive shoots had shed a snow-flurry of small white stars;
the yellow holy thorn still blossomed in the rough places of the hills,
and the blending of many wild flowers was like a maiden blush on the
earth's soft bosom.
At early morning Gilbert rode along the crest of a low and grassy hill
that was still sheltered from the sun by the high mountains to
eastward, and he drank in the cool and scented air as if it had been
water of paradise, and he a man saved out of death to life by the
draught.
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